David Grable
“I like to bring some harmony to chaos, if I can. Minds are rarely calm and often seek to be stilled. What art starts as a mess (a scribble, a doodle, a pour, a weave, a sound), can end up grounding us to a state of calm, convergence, and peace.”
“What matters is what appears in your soul, not what your eyes see and what you can name.”
― Zdzisław Beksiński
A current resident of Mansfield Center, Connecticut, David Grable was born and raised in Illinois – where he started drawing and painting at the age of 8 – under the direction of his aunt Dorthy. At the age of about 14-15 he made a transition to fantasy and surreal art. He began drawing again in 2019 (after a 10+ year hiatus), and did a deeper dive into the abstract, figurative, and portraiture art – eventually bringing all of them together to form his unique style. His influences include Salvador Dali, HR Giger, Zdzislaw Beksinski, Allen Williams, and Roberto Matta.
3 of Us
Janet Leombruni is a Connecticut based painter, known for her figurative work, described as expressive realism. Her work portrays the everyday life of family, friends, and students, using tropes of fables, literature, nursery rhymes or myths. It is framed as narrative figurative painting that often puts viewers into tense, morally complicated, or emotionally ‘raw’ situations rather than neatly resolved stories. This points to a social-realist impulse: painting as witnessing, without turning people into symbols, and using realism for empathy and discomfort rather than prettiness. Vivid colors, motion in textures, and design dominate her work.
Leombruni asks the viewer to wonder: what is going on here?
Juried Art Show March/April 2026
2026 Tolland High School Juried Art Show
